Wednesday, November 16, 2011

9 days 'til Black Friday, but only 7 days 'til Dark Wednesday at Victory

Next Wednesday, at this time, some of the eagerly awaiting beer geeks enthusiasts will be lining up prior to the brewery/restaurant's opening at 11:30 a.m.

Good thing is, compared to last year, it sounds like there'll be more product to go around and more organization to keep those looking for the beer happier.

Brewery staff will be on hand to keep the atmosphere fun in the hours leading up the official release. From 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., every person in line will receive raffle tickets for freebies that will be given away. And, One Village Coffee (the coffee collaborators in the awesome Victory Village beer project) will be serving up free coffee to those in line.

As for supply, they are expecting upwards of 250 cases available for sale at the brewpub with another "few hundred" getting distributed throughout their footprint from those wholesalers that placed orders.

But, as they've been very careful to say at the brewery, "Get it now before it goes away forever". Of course, I'm always skeptical that anything as extremely popular as something like this will ever go completely away forever. But, as Karen Noonan, communications manager at Victory, commented: "I'm sure we'll experiment with barrel-aging again some day. But right now, as we are approaching capacity for our brewing, there really isn't room to hold all of those barrels. They take up a lot of space."

Oh yes, and since this project is indefinitely disappearing, the barrels too must go. They are selling off the bourbon barrels that the beer was aged in. As of last week, 130 of the 159 have already been reserved for purchase. If you'd like to get in on one of those, you should -- as they say -- act quickly. (Update: The barrels have now all been reserved and the brewery is taking a waiting list of names.)

I may mosey over to Victory to check in on the festivities and grab a little lunch. Seems like a swell way to kick off the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

Happy Dark Wednesday. Hope you all enjoy and get what you asked for in your stocking :)